Dwarf planet Ceres Hosts Home-grown Organic Material

Ceres is doing some home-brewing in the asteroid belt. Organic material has been found on the dwarf planet located between Mars and Jupiter – and it was produced in-house.

Using the Dawn space probe, which has been orbiting Ceres since early 2015, planetary scientists found pockets of carbon-based organic compounds on the surface of the space rock.

The identity of the tar-like minerals can’t be pinned down precisely, but their mineral fingerprints match the make-up of kerite or asphaltite. The constituents and concentrations of these organic materials suggest that it’s unlikely they came to Ceres from another planetary body.

First, they wouldn’t have survived the heat of an impact on the surface of Ceres. And if they had hitched a ride on another stellar object, they would be widely dispersed, rather than concentrated in pockets. That means they must have come from Ceres itself.



“Anything else, you would expect it to be more widespread,” says Michael Küppers at the European Space Agency.

Chris Russell at the University of California, Los Angeles, leads NASA’s Dawn science team and says this finding, along with recent discoveries of water ice and bright spots of mineral deposits on Ceres, points to a more complex picture of the dwarf planet than we once assumed.

“It’s not just an accumulation of rock, but in fact, it’s been doing things,” he says. What it’s doing on the inside is not entirely clear yet, but the organic material on the surface indicates that there are processes within Ceres regulated by heat and water.

All this might sound like the building blocks for life. But Russell is hesitant to go that far.

“This is a different type of material,” he says. “It’s prebiotic, which means that it’s something you would expect to make before you had biology. It’s sort of on the road to biology.”



Russell says that finding organic materials on Ceres makes it more likely that other asteroids may also harbour similar molecular building blocks.
Küppers agrees, adding that this changes our outlook on potential spots where we may look for life in the solar system.

“A couple of decades ago, when talking about life in the solar system, we were focused on Mars. And now, we are more and more looking at other locations, like Saturn’s moon Titan and the subsurfaces of places like [Jupiter’s moon] Europa,” he says. “And now, also Ceres in the asteroid belt.”
Journal reference: Science

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Imagining Humans on Mars

Billionaire Elon Musk hopes to build self-sustaining human colonies on Mars. How have science fiction writers imagined the possible role of Mars in humanity’s future?

Last month in Guadalajara, Mexico, Elon Musk, a former graduate student in physics and founder of the space exploration company SpaceX, made headlines with a daring plan: to put human beings on Mars as early as 2024. Musk’s vision is not of a small handful of astronauts or astrotourists taking a short walk on Mars’s surface. Rather, he sees Mars as the future home of a self-sustaining human colony.

At times Musk’s presentation to the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) felt like the opening scene of a science fiction movie—a comparison that he would probably not dislike. Indeed, SpaceX’s work has been littered with references to science fiction. The company’s Falcon 9 rocket is a nod to the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. And at the IAC, Musk suggested that the first SpaceX ship to Mars might be named Heart of Gold, after the ship in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Those works, however, imagine travel between stars and planets far from the Milky Way. How has science fiction envisioned space exploration closer to home, especially as advances in spaceflight have made human travel to Mars seem almost within our reach?



Mars as utopia and refuge
In the late 19th century, astronomical observations of Mars led to intense speculation about whether its surface might harbor life. American astronomer Percival Lowell even built an observatory in Arizona to get a closer look at what he believed were artificially constructed Martian canals. Although most astronomers agreed that there was little evidence for life on Mars, the idea of a Martian race quickly took hold in fiction.

Many of the first science fiction novels about Mars described travelers to the Red Planet who encountered not merely life forms, but utopian civilizations. In A Plunge into Space (1890), Irishman Robert Cromie envisions a Martian society in which air travel is common and society has evolved beyond the need for politicians. In their novel Unveiling a Parallel (1893), Iowa feminists Alice Jones and Ella Merchant send their protagonist to two egalitarian societies on Mars—one in which women and men are equally promiscuous and violent and another in which equality of the sexes has resulted in a scientifically and philosophically advanced utopia.

A spherical steel spacecraft transports people to a Red Planet utopia in A Plunge into Space (1890). War-waging Martians attack Earth in The War of the Worlds (1898).



The most famous English-language science fiction novel of the late 19th century, H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898), imagines a significantly less peaceful encounter between humans and Martians. The book’s unnamed English narrator first reads about possible activity on Mars in Nature. Weeks later, he finds himself fleeing for his life as tentacled Martians kill or imprison his fellow humans. Only a humble bacterial infection saves humanity from total defeat. At the end of the novel, the narrator muses that humans, too, might travel beyond their planet one day—but they will have to contend with the surviving Martians if they do:

If the Martians can reach Venus, there is no reason to suppose that the thing is impossible for men, and when the slow cooling of the sun makes this earth uninhabitable, as at last it must do, it may be that the thread of life that has begun here will have streamed out. . . . It may be, on the other hand, that the destruction of the Martians is only a reprieve. To them, and not to us, perhaps, is the future ordained.

Wells’s vision of humans traveling to other planets to escape a crisis on Earth became a staple of mid-20th-century science fiction. Once again, Mars proved a popular destination. In several novels, including Red Planet (1949), avowedly libertarian author Robert Heinlein imagines political discontent as a motivation for Martian settlement—and for eventual rebellion from Earth authorities.



Ray Bradbury’s celebrated short story collection The Martian Chronicles (1950) describes humanity fleeing a coming nuclear war and encountering telepathic Martians. The collection also deals with life on war-torn Earth; perhaps the most famous story in The Martian Chronicles is “There Will Come Soft Rains,” which tells of a mechanized California house carrying on its work after its occupants die in a nuclear blast. Nuclear disaster also prompts the creation of Martian colonies in Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968). However, the colonists—and the androids they build—find Mars so desolate that many sneak back to Earth illegally.

The scientific challenges of Mars
Advances in space science during and after the Cold War have seemed to bring a human landing on Mars closer and closer to reality. In the 1960s NASA’s Mariner program successfully executed a series of Mars flybys that garnered the agency increasingly clear images of the planet. In 1975 NASA successfully landed Viking 1 and Viking 2 on Mars’s surface. Further missions to Mars have only become more ambitious. The celebrated Mars rovers, including Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity, have mapped Mars’s surface, sampled its soil and rocks, and helped scientists assess whether the planet was habitable in the past.

Viking 1 and Curiosity have provided scientists and sci-fi writers with striking views of the real Red Planet.

As scientists learn more about Mars’s geology and atmosphere, novelists have increasingly focused on the scientific and technological requirements for putting humans on the planet. Some of the most celebrated contemporary authors of Martian fiction have backgrounds in science or engineering. The most popular example is The Martian (2011), the debut novel by computer engineer Andy Weir, which chronicles the struggles and adventures of an astronaut accidentally left for dead on Mars’s surface.



The Martian focuses on living on Mars as it is. In contrast, Kim Stanley Robinson’s acclaimed Mars Trilogy imagines a centuries-long scientific effort to terraform the planet to support human life. Red Mars/i> (1993), the first book in the trilogy, focuses on the scientific challenges of remaking an entire planet, from the geological to the psychological. Scientific problems are not the only ones Robinson’s characters face: Conflict soon arises over whether Mars should be terraformed at all or whether it should be preserved in its natural desert state.



Science fiction has the unique ability to pose “what-if” questions about scientific and technological developments and to reflect on how those developments might affect human society. Each wave of Mars fiction has evolved alongside new knowledge of the Red Planet and has also raised questions related to the social concerns and political controversies of the day. Nineteenth-century Martian novels also served as commentaries on Victorian culture. In 20th-century fiction, colonies on Mars function as both a bastion of hope for humanity’s future and a sign that something has gone terribly wrong on Earth. Dick and Bradbury were implicitly condemning the casual use of nuclear weapons when they imagined humans fleeing to another planet. Robinson’s work explores the possible effect humans might have on Mars while reminding the reader that, humans are already altering Earth.

Musk’s plan for colonizing Mars within the next century is reminiscent of many of the novels about humans living on the Red Planet. In a recent interview, Robinson suggested that Musk modernize his sci-fi-inspired vision: “Musk’s science fiction story needs some updating, some real imagination using current findings from biology and ecology.” Perhaps as SpaceX hones its Mars settlement plan Musk should reread the Mars Trilogy along with The Martian, which depicted a human living on Mars with 21st-century technology.



If Musk’s ambitious plan succeeds, new takes on Mars in science fiction novels and movies will likely arise—along with new questions about what the achievement will mean for humanity.
Source: Melinda Baldwin is the Books editor at Physics Today.

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The Real Search for Life in Mars Begins

NASA's Astrobiology Institute (NAI) announced that the SETI Institute has been selected as a new member of the NAI for a 5-year research program

The team called “Planetary Environments and the Fingerprints of Life" led by planetary geologist and Senior Research Scientist, Nathalie Cabrol, the team's work will address key questions. How can we identify the signature of life not just here on Earth, but on Mars as well? How does a planet's changing environment impact the evidence for life?

"I am absolutely thrilled that the SETI Institute is joining the NAI. In the next five years, along with our partner institutions, we will focus on decoding the fingerprints of life--the ‘biosignatures’--in extreme environments here on Earth to help us look for life on Mars. Our goal is to understand the survival of ‘biosignatures’ from an early, wetter Mars to the harsh environment of the red planet today.

Understanding the role that the changing Martian environment has had on biosignatures will inform us on how to recognize these signatures, and how to explore them. We bring to this ambitious quest new exploration tools and, with NASA's Mars 2020 on the horizon, the timing could not be more perfect," stated Cabrol. "Personally and professionally, this is a tremendously exciting project because we aim to develop a roadmap to’ biosignature’ exploration for Mars for future missions."



"I am delighted at the news that the SETI Institute led team has been chosen as one of the new members in the NASA Astrobiology Institute. The team worked hard at putting together an outstanding proposal and it is a positive reflection on the process that is in place to review the proposals that their effort is recognized and rewarded by their professional peers. We look forward to an exciting five years of outstanding research under the aegis of this award," said David Black, President and CEO of the SETI Institute.

To model and test strategies for ‘biosignature’ detection, Cabrol's team will conduct fieldwork in extreme environments on Earth that are analogous to sites on Mars where water once flowed. Fieldwork will be done at Yellowstone National Park, sites in California and Chile, Axel Heiberg Island in the high Arctic, and Western Australia.



Each site is an analog to Mars: volcanic and hydrothermal terrain, lake sediments, evaporates, and perennial cold springs. Sites will be explored from satellites, air, ground, and at the microscopic level in the field and laboratory. Understanding how to integrate this multi-scale information will help scientists learn how to select the best sites for discovering ‘biosignatures’ on Mars.

Cabrol assembled a diverse team of experts in planetary science, robotics, laboratory experimentation, and exploration to conduct fieldwork, analyze samples, and develop a ‘biosignature’ roadmap to guide the search for life on Mars.

In addition to more than a dozen scientists at the SETI Institute, her team brings together scientists from universities, government agencies and industry partners in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and South America. In the US, partners include Arizona State University, University of Montana, University of Tennessee, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Institute of Technology, Honeybee Robotics, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and NASA Ames Research Center. Non-US partners include McGill University (Canada), Centro de Astrobiología (CAB, Madrid, Spain), Deutscher Wetterdienst (Germany), Friedrich-Alexander University (Germany), and Campoalto for logistics in Chile.

Over the next 5 years, more than twenty scientists will work together to help answer the question of where, what and how to search for the right rocks on Mars to discover the fingerprints of life on the red planet.



Source: SETI Institute

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